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Managing Monochrome in Lightroom – a workflow from colour to fine art black and white
Exhibition Talk by John Fontana ARPS
The development of the fine art monochrome photograph depends on many features.The workflow to the final result can be split into four stages.
- Image capture.
- The optimisation of that information.
- General and local tone changes, allied to
- Those changes which allow the photographer to communicate his ‘message’.
SHOOT RAW
At image capture, if available, shoot in RAW, and do not use a B&W mode if there is such a facility on your camera. Shooting in RAW gives sixteen bit images whereas JPEG's are in 8 bit. 8 bit black and white images have 256 tonal bands whereas 16 bit mono images comprise more than 35,000 tonal values. Think of a wall built of 256 bricks, and think of the same size wall made up of 35,000 much more tiny bricks. Losing one brick in a 256 brick wall has to be much more significant than losing one out of 35,000. If you imagine that every stage of manipulation of an image is like losing bricks from a wall, you can see that shooting in RAW protects against image collapse.AVOID HIGHLIGHT CLIPPING
If you use the camera histogram for guidance on exposure, you should use exposure settings that move the histogram as far to the right as you can but without clipping the highlights. This allows the maximum capture of data in the shadow that is so important for a good even spread of tones in your final print. However camera histograms are based on JPEG compressions of image that tend to suggest more over-exposure than is the reality. As you will see later it is possible to recover up to a stop and a half of apparent over-exposure in Lightroom. If in doubt, bracket, import the images to Lightroom and then, using Photo – Edit In – Open as Layers in Photoshop, use masks to combine.All Lightroom adjustments are non-destructive. Each change is stored, along with its value, and these changes are only effected when the image is exported for say printing for file storage elsewhere, etc. As you hover over each stage the navigator panel gives a representation of the effect to that stage.
BASIC FIRST ADJUSTMENTS – OPTIMISING THE INFORMATION
Spot removal:
Check for any spotting. Spot removal – After choosing spot tool, adjust opacity to 100 % and just click on spot. Move in sequence around the image by clicking on the Page Down button. Spot removal can be synchronised over multiple images.
Grayscale conversion:
There are two techniques:
Technique 1:
Click on Grayscale to convert to mono and then go through basic adjustments that include
Setting the white and black points using the exposure and black sliders,
Correcting over-exposure with the recovery slider, and
Altering mid-tones with the fill slider.
Follow this sequence with each new image, aiming to get the histogram to spread across its width with no clipping. In fact the Auto button often does a very good job to begin which you can then change to suit yourself.
Demonstrating Clipping
Moving cursor in histogram area highlights areas for exposure, fill, recovery and blacks, which can then be dragged right or left.
Hovering over the clipping triangles in the histogram will reveal clipping. They can be permanently activated by clicking on them. Holding down the ALT key while using the recovery slider, will show a threshold representation of clipping. The hotkey J toggles showing clipping on & off.
Clarity slider
Clarity adjustments increase mid-tone contrast and give an appearance of sharpening. Reducing clarity can give an appealing diffusion effect for creative purpose.
At this stage you might well want to move to the colour channel sliders to alter the tonal values in different parts of the image, a very powerful tool which can bring about very large changes in the appearance of the image, especially for expressive intent. Use Auto in the colour sliders panel for initial optimal adjustment. You can use the target adjustment tool to darken or lighten tonal values of colours in the original image. The V key toggles between colour and B&W. However, this type of grayscale conversion can introduce noise in areas like the sky.
Technique 2:
A better way is to use the HSL scale by clicking on HSL rather than Grayscale. This helps to alleviate noise and many controls remain available that would be lost in grayscale like vibrance, saturation, temp slider, tint and camera calibration etc.
Drag all the saturation sliders across to the extreme left. Save these adjustments as a pre-set by clicking the + sign on pre-sets, give a title like De-Saturate All Colours, tick the colour adjustments box, and then clicking on this pre-set will instantly de-saturate all colours.
Ignore the Hue section, which does not make any changes.
Then work with sliders or target adjustment tool in the luminance section. Use + and – keys to make changes to the sliders.
Good video tutorial on www.photoshopnews/stories/downloads/LRNgrayscale_STD2.mov
Further Global Adjustments
Once you are happy here, you can move on to the Tone Curve box, where you can make further small global changes, either by using the four sliders, dragging the tone curve up and down along its length, or by using the Target Adjustment tool.
Further more subtle changes can be produced by use of the split tone triangles beneath the Curve graph.
At all times you may wish or need to go back to the basic adjustment area for further refining.
Local Adjustments
Tool overlays for adjustment brush, graduated filter etc available via View – Tool Overlays. The H key hides or reveals them.
In local adjustment tools, use the square toggle button to display sliders so that multiple adjustments can be made to the same mask.
Adjustment brush
Do not forget creative sharpening.
Gradient tool
Post-crop vignetting:
Amount from 100 to –100 goes from very dark to very light.
Mid-point controls vignette from near centre up to just edges
Roundness controls shape from round to rectangular
Feathering as you would expect.